Scientific Research

A new digital tool is helping health workers manage their mental health. Could it pave the way for a wider transformation in the way services are delivered?

Blog post by Francis Lee, Ph.D.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to exert pressure on global healthcare systems, frontline healthcare workers remain vulnerable to developing significant psychiatric symptoms. These effects have the potential to further cripple the healthcare workforce at a time when a second wave of the coronavirus is considered likely in the fall, and workforce shortages already pose a serious challenge.

Studies show that healthcare workers are also less likely to proactively seek mental health services due to concerns about confidentiality, privacy and barriers to accessing care. Thus, there is an obvious and pressing need for scalable tools to act as an ‘early warning system’ to alert healthcare workers when they are at risk of depression, anxiety or trauma symptoms and then rapidly connect them with the help they need. To address the mental health needs of the 47,000 employees and affiliated physicians in our hospital system, New York-Presbyterian (NYP) has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital tool that screens for symptoms, provides instant feedback, and connects participants with crisis counselling and treatment referrals.

Read the full article at the World Economic Forum »

Q. In your work with the Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Research Consortium, have you uncovered any new genes that you think might be related to mental illnesses besides major depression?

ANSWER BY: Huda Akil, Ph.D.

Yes, the Pritzker Consortium is interested in three severe psychiatric disorders—major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. We hope to discover the genes involved in these illnesses by studying the genetic variations that are associated with these illnesses and by studying the brains of individuals with these disorders to discover genes and proteins that are altered either because of the original genetics or because of environmental and developmental factors that have converged to change the brain.

Read the full answer at Brain and Behavior Research Foundation »

Carl Zimmer
December 28, 2015

Throughout the day, a clock ticks inside our bodies. It rouses us in the morning and makes us sleepy at night. It raises and lowers our body temperature at the right times, and regulates the production of insulin and other hormones.

The body’s circadian clock even influences our thoughts and feelings. Psychologists have measured some of its effects on the brain by having people take cognitive tests at different times of day.

“Sleep and activity cycles are a very big part of psychiatric illnesses,” said Huda Akil, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan.

Yet neuroscientists have struggled to understand exactly how the circadian clock affects our minds. After all, researchers can’t simply pop open a subject’s skull and monitor his brain cells over the course of each day.

A few years ago, Dr. Akil and her colleagues came up with an idea for the next best thing.

Read the full article at NYTimes.com »

Maria Konnikova
December 26, 2015

“Fibroblast Growth Factor 9 Is a Novel Modulator of Negative Affect,” from PNAS

Depression is notoriously tough to handle pharmaceutically. We still don’t know how S.S.R.I.s work, for instance—or even if they work at all. This paper offers a previously untried target for treatment: FGF9, a neurotrophin (a type of protein) that appears to play a key role in regulating embryonic development and cell differentiation and seems also to be important in regulating our emotional state.

Read the full article at the New Yorker

Study in humans & rats shows more physical changes in depressed brains

September 8, 2015

Low. Down. Less than normal. That’s what the word depression means, and what people with depression often feel like. But sometimes, depression can mean too much of something – as new research shows.

The discovery, about a protein called fibroblast growth factor 9 or FGF9, goes against previous findings that depressed brains often have less of key components than non-depressed brains.

In this case, people with major depression had 32 percent more of FGF9 in a key part of their brain than people without the condition. In rats, raising FGF9 levels artificially led to depression-like behavior changes, and repeated social stress caused brain FGF9 levels to rise.

Taken together, the findings provide more evidence that depression is a physical illness. If FGF9 or its effects prove to be a good target for drugs, the finding could eventually help lead to better medications for the mental health condition that affects millions of Americans.

Read the full article at UofMHealth.org »
Read the publication abstract at PNAS »